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One interesting point is, if you look at the production/ price curve and look at the USAF needs in isolation, continued and mass production (and our ally the Japanese wanted this plane) of the F-22, a very impressive ship -- I believe the radar cross section is considerably less than the F-35 -- would have been something like 20% more than the -35 (development costs of -22 already sunk) . Of course it uses more fuel, but it does have engine redundancy.
It would be interesting to know the training loss rate of single vs twin engined modern fighters. Twin gives more failures, but recovery under many of those.
For this scenario to be generally applicable, it requires the Navy/Marines to stay with F/A-18s and Harriers. Also, the Air Force might want a less expensive limited war attack plane -- A-10s or maybe F-15,F-16, A/F -18. But we have an eternal arms race.

One interesting point is, if you look at the production/ price curve and look at the USAF needs in isolation, continued and mass production (and our ally the Japanese wanted this plane) of the F-22, a very impressive ship -- I believe the radar cross section is considerably less than the F-35 -- would have been something like 20% more than the -35 (development costs of -22 already sunk) . Of course it uses more fuel, but it does have engine redundancy.
It would be interesting to know the training loss rate of single vs twin engined modern fighters. Twin gives more failures, but recovery under many of those.
For this scenario to be generally applicable, it requires the Navy/Marines to stay with F/A-18s and Harriers. Also, the Air Force might want a less expensive limited war attack plane -- A-10s or maybe F-15,F-16, A/F -18. But we have an eternal arms race.

The Dan Katz AWST stealth series of articles clearly point out the F-22 has better stealth than the F-35.

But with all the fancy features with the F-35 the US has decides to sell it to just about everyone whereas the US wouldn't sell the F-22 to its most trusted allies. That mistake kept per unit costs up.

Plus various elements played up the F-35's capabilities as a cheaper alternative with the F-22. Those cumulative effects led towards the bad decision to end F-22 production.

Re the comment on keeping this secret. I go with Theodore von Karman: there are some things that should be secret (i.e., detailed war plans) but that we should have an open society and outcompete the closed societies.
Only after the cold war closed did we undestand the extent to which the Soviets were piggybacking on our technology (e.g. SST). But they still failed. Still, we do need to work very hard at preventing cyber penetration, technological, business, and, now, political. We are well into an undeclared cyberwar.
Also, in covering up problems, we only support the inherently disfunctional nature of the procurement system for advanced weapons.

1. This article doesn't really mean much without comparing it to other fighters. "Grand total of 250" might seem like a lot, but we have no reference point. How often does the F18 (with and without drop tanks) refuel for the same trip?

2. Lt. Gen. Jon Davis mentioned "The airplane has got longer legs than an F-18 with drop tanks", so he is pretty much stating that the reason the number times the F35 is contacting with the tanker is so high is because of some procedures put into place that are not found with other fighters. So the rest of the article that is talking about thirsty F35s is kind of silly. The article should be called "How often do jet fighers need to refuel"

"nine tankers flew with the 10 F-35Bs, transferring a total of 766,000 lb. of fuel over 250 aerial refuelings, or 25 per F-35" means an average 3064 lb refuel which implies a top up just under 80% full like you suggested.

And in comparison, the Navy has only 1/3 of its total fleet of Hornets and Super Hornets flyable today, as result of the backlog of repairs.

It's a matter of funding, not the quality of the aircraft, when repairs get backlogged. However, the Mission Capable rate of F-35s is far higher than any other aircraft we've ever had, in excess of 90%.

Did you actually read the article you linked? Of the 108 that require upgrades to 3F,
- 26 are software only, let's say a day.
-18 are software and processor cards, 3 days.

So almost half are minimal work.
Another batch are modifications to the helmet system and software/processors, 15 days.

Only 45 require major structural work, not counting the ones that may require additional work caused by the insulation problem. That is expected to take 30 days.

Seems like a lot until you remember that 400+ F-16As required reprogramming the flight control system and the total replacement of the horizontal tailplane with a unit 25pct larger. Ten times as many, clearly the F-16 is a failure.

His experience doesn't matter. Yes, it probably would have been cheaper to load the squadron on a commercial transport ship. But cheap was not the objective - getting in the flying experience and refueling experience and demonstrating the reliability of the aircraft - getting an entire squadron to cross the world's biggest ocean without a single incident, let alone a loss of an aircraft, is part of proving a small part of what we have with this aircraft that has been the subject of vast amounts of small minded anklebiting by trolls like you.

I think we all know my feelings on the F-35. For once the USAF did learn some lessons. They are doing the right thing in this case. We don't need to loose a 120 milling dollar aircraft even if its a hugely over cost trainer.

I have seen two horrible crashes at Elmendorf AFB.

One was an AWACS crash. 24 people dies and 500 million plus worth of aircraft lost (and yes I do count the loss to the US treasury as well as loss of life)

When it settled, the cause was ingesting a flock of geese and they had NO goose (or bird) control program (in reality, it was on paper and not active and was beyond deficient even on paper)

This was a touch and go TRAINING mission for pilots.

24 people on board as the attitude is, if we fly its full up. You can't let those people train on the simulators and do something effective with their time?

One pilot off the record said, even if warned they would have done the same thing at that thing. .

Why, they treat training as a full up war situation, balls to the walls, casualties be damned .

That has changed to at least some degree.

So being safe I applaud some semblance of sanity in that part of the USAF.

We also lost a C-17 (200 million and 3 lives) to a stupid air show show of training missions.

The Navy stuck a P-3 into the drink out the Aleutians way. Fully manned for a mission that did not require more than a few people on board.

3 or 4 V-22 losses due to not quitting a bad approach and or dust injestion when it was only training.

The F-35B was never intended to fly across the Pacific with minimal refuelings. I am confident that the F-35B, in concert with and empowered by all the advanced integrated radar/lidar/photo/intel/com functions amongst the constellation of our land, airborne, and satellite capabilities, will prove to be a superior weapon. How about a fast mobile stealth littoral platform from which to launch?

#1 - It demonstrates that for F-35 ops on a Wasp or America class amphibious assault ship the USMC/USN better get a V-22 with aerial tanker capability operational asap.

#2 - It demonstrates/reminds us the importance of aerial refueling in support of "all" US aircraft ops so adequate aerial tankers are available. Currently the USMC doesn't have an aerial tanker platform to support F-35B ops off of the amphibious assault ships (not real aircraft carriers).

And on CVNs the USN has to use F/A-18E/Fs to serve as air tankers because it retired its better platform 8 years ago due to stupidity and budget concerns.

Looking at the "tyranny of distance" involved in the WESTPAC there is a clear and present need to provide adequate platforms for this operational task asap.

No, it's nuts to waste valuable and extremely expensive carrier deck space on carrier launched tankers that can only top off a couple of attack aircraft max per tanker, when we have whole fleets of land based KC-46 tankers that are much cheaper to base on land and can fuel an entire squadron of attack aircraft with a single tanker load.

The economics of carrier based tankers makes absolutely no sense at all. We have dozens of land air bases in the West Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, anywhere we'd ever fight, all within easy flying distance of both our potential enemies and our carrier task forces.

DIRT,,, and you preach reality? ha.. you're on that same rant which makes ZERO sense. Land based wide body tankers to support a carrier strike force? Are you going to send two tankers, a flying spare? Next you'll say they should bring back Navy B-47 bombers.

The Navy needs their aircraft to grow some legs and enjoy the flexibility of home grown tanker support. They've done it forever..Navy does a good job of it.

LMCO built the "birds" to fit the US Govt. "specs" that hamstrung the entire program because of the USMC STOVL "bird" requirement.

And, the misguided one-design-fits-all approach for the other two (USAF & USN) service needs.

While the F-35B is far more capable than the AV-8B, a different and better platform could have been developed for common USAF/USN needs. But the knuckleheads stuck the JSF program to it's STOVL baseline configuration.

And based on running head long with this game-plan, it resulted in the "concurrency" approach by producing and deploying the platform while it's still in development with immature tech.

The same thing has happened with the US Army FCS, USMC EFV, and USN LCS and DDG-1000 programs.

Yeah ... such a horrible snafu .. resulted in the world's most advanced warfighter being produced at high rates a decade or more in advance of any other possible competitor, providing air dominance for a generation, all for less than the cost of a fourth plus gen warbird, with massive superiority in kill ratio, and better maintenance availability. And which provides capabilities that massively improves the performance of fourth gen aircraft in combined integrated ops.

But we all know an A-10 can't do what a F-35 can and a F-35 can't do what an A-10 can.

And if you don't think the EFV, LCS, DDG-1000 and FCS programs weren't SNAFUs, as well as the F-35s protracted and well-known development issues, and cost-over-runs, then you don't know as much as you think you do.

Your information is wrong. At Red Flag the last three weeks the F-35 had MC of 92+%, higher than any other aircraft at the exercise, on two-a-day sorties for all aircraft in the squadron. This is consistent also with the Marine's experience with the B model.

It wasn't just because the AF had fewer maintenance failures on the F-35 than other aircraft, but the ALIS system worked superbly in immediately pinpointing the sources of any issues so that the maintainer could quickly deal with them. No can do on any other aircraft on the planet. Huge benefit to the F-35, and the maintainers are absolutely ecstatic about the ease of maintenance on the F-35. And they were operating on a deployed status in Nevada (the squadron was based at Hill AFB). It's all in the first person interviews published on numerous media outlets if you actually want to learn something some day, instead of spouting very old and misleading DOT&E reports which have been rejected by the service chiefs as wrong. Such that Gilmore, the resident crank at DOT&E was finally forced out.

A 74% MC rate is poor, but typical for an old airframe. The Navy and Marines are also plagued with very low MC rates on the Hornet and Super Hornet, in part due to the age of the fleet, and in part also due to lack of funding from Congress .. only 1/3 of the Navy's attack aircraft are flyable today.

It only uses less fuel than the F-18 because it has one less engine than the F-18. BUT the f-18 with one engine out also uses less fuel. An F-35 with one engine out uses NO fuel, but it also results in no aircraft. Oops.

Engine failures on modern jet engines are extremely rare ... the rate of engine failures is insignificant by comparison with pilot error as a cause of accidents.

And one of the most common types of engine failures that occurs is a failure of the turbine blades ... in a side-by-side twin engine installation as we have on all modern fighter/attack aircraft, an uncontained turbine blade failure on one engine is very likely to take out the other engine.

The supposed advantages of twins over singles are mostly myth, not borne out by actual accident stats.

"... in a side-by-side twin engine installation as we have on all modern fighter/attack aircraft, an uncontained turbine blade failure on one engine is very likely to take out the other engine. The supposed advantages of twins over singles are mostly myth, not borne out by actual accident stats"

Wrong. Not "very likely".

Turbine blades are pretty small blades, compared to fan blades. Most turbine blade failures will be contained - indeed it's a requirement. All the F135 turbine blade failures were contained. "Possible" is what you might say. A twin engine can release a blade in an arc of about 75% and it will miss the other engine - the engines are side by side, not with one wrapped around the other. Turbine blade release is very unlikely to result in catastrophic disk failure, which would be uncontained (and impractical to do due to the engine weight it would result in).

If you dig into USAF engine accident stats (google USAF Aviation Safety Division), you will find the F-15 engine caused class A rate is about 0.8 losses per 100,000 EFH, while the F-16 is about 1.6. What do you find? The twin is about half the single !!

If the engineers at LM could have had access to a crystal ball back in the 80's for a JSF, they would have taken all of the best attributes of the F-14, F-15 and F-16 and combined them into a....oh no, Sukhoi did that already. So, LM lone wolfed it into the Winged Suppository and now we're hanging everything on missiles and a stealth tech that will be irrelevant in 10 years.

With the huge internal bomb bay of the F35B, why did LM not build removable transfer tanks to fit in them? Of course, there is always a chance of transfer failure but they could have flown the same conservative route but just not refueled so many times. Also, why not take them to Japan on an amphibious assault carrier? One loss of an F 35B would have more than paid for all of the refueling and the cost of the ship. It would have taken longer but there are no mission requirements at this time. Along the way, the Marines could have practiced their new landing and take-off techniques.

In fact, the F-35B can't carry some ordnance in it that the F-35A and Cs can because it's internal bays are smaller due to the certain dead-weight, that it doesn't use 98% of the time, that the A & C models doesn't have.

Depends upon your definition of "huge" ... in volume, it's less than the F-22, but in length, the F-35 is longer than the F-22 such that it can carry some munitions that cannot be fitted into a F-22. As far as comparisons go, it's an extremely limited data set. Only two operational stealth fighter/attack aircraft with internal bays in the world ... plus a couple other prototypes by Russia and China that are probably years if not decades away from deployment.

Perhaps someone remembered that 1968 incident where a tanker crew towed a shot up F-105 to a field in Thailand where he could disconnect and do a dead-stick landing.
Having the refuel probes deployed and locked for the whole trip gave one more option to get a sick bird back over dry land.

"As the fighter force increases, it is apparent that global tanker demand and potential future threats will drive an increase for the NEXT GENERATION OF TANKERS (emphasis mine).”
- Col. Chris Karns, Air Force spokesman

If you remember several months back the USAF wanted a next generation stealth tanker.

Had Col. Chris Karns, Air Force spokesman been lobbying for more KC-46s, the current generation of tankers, would he have said "the next generation of tankers"?

"Stealthy Tankers? The U.S. Air Force, with the KC-46 in production, looks ahead to battlefield red-ready follow-ons"
archive.aviationweek.com/issue/20160926#!&pid=24

"Big game changer! Dem congress made sure the F136 never got to compete because Dems control Conneticut where F135 is built."
- mcarew@cox.net

Not exactly correct. SoD Rumsfield did not include funding for FY 2006. Neither did SOD Gates for FY 2007-2010. During FY-2006-2008 Republicans controlled the House. From 2009-2010 Democrats controlled the house. The Democrats voted continued funding for the F136 in FY2010.

The Republicans regained control of the House in 2011 and failed to pass funding so a temporary stop work order was given as there was no appropriation. GE/Rolls self funded until it was clear the Republican controlled House was not going to continue F136 development.

There was no need for a backup engine, the Brits were hooked without further need for the possibility of offsets, and the Republican controlled House was inclined to spend the extra billion+ bucks on other things.

"The Dems ARE the richest block in Congress, not the Repubs."
- mcarew@cox.net

It is true that the Blue States generally pay more in federal taxes than they receive; while Red states receive more in federal spending than they pay in taxes.

I do not think that that fact that anything to do with the cancellation of the belated F136.

The important factor was that the F-35 had been flying with the F135 since 2006. Which is why the Department of Defense was not requesting funding for the F136 since 2006.

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